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Globalist Family Values

It has been my wont to comment cynically, as one who has been disabused of a malign illusion, upon the reality of the GOP's genuine "What's the Matter with Kansas?" electoral strategy: promises for the social conservatives, deliveries for the plutocrats. It does occur to me, nevertheless, that this band of machiavellians and running dogs does, in fact, espouse a notion of "family values", and they should receive all of the credit they deserve for this affirmation.

Contemplate, for a moment, the following pair of quotations:

First, Karl Rove, explaining the imperative of an amnesty for millions of illegal immigrants:

"I don't want my 17-year-old son to have to pick tomatoes or make beds in Las Vegas."

Second, an emigre Wall $treet Journal editorial writer, quoted by John Zmirak in his masterful essay, America the Abstraction, one of the decade's finest pieces of political writing:

“They’re not real Americans,” he said in a thick Slavic accent. The people who show up wanting to work, who aren’t afraid of 12 hour days, who set up shops in Chinatown and put their whole families to work from childhood on—people who put their faith in capitalism, those were the real Americans. “Not those resentful parasites. Just because they happen to live here, that doesn’t make them Americans.”

Laying aside for the moment that blasphemous and parodic notion of 'faith in capitalism' - while The Market may not die for anyone's sins, it apparently exercises a salvific effect by means of its metaphysic of chaos: destruction is creation, death is life, immiseration is (someone else's) wealth) - and laying aside even the burden of Zmirak's piece, which is the exposure of the perversion that is the displacement of Actually-Existing America by an armed dogmatism, let us consider the architecture, if you will, of this world-image.

On the one hand, we have those for whom only certain employments are suitable. Most of the employments to which men have had to turn their hands throughout the history of our race are ignoble and beneath their empyrean dignity. Moreover, this status is, at a minimum, heritable, a birthright of a de facto nobility of sorts; there is also the meritocratic principle, by which there occurs a certain churning of the nobility; but this principle does not alter in the slightest the structure of the caste system itself. Some are born to rule, while others are born to toil. So, on the other hand, we have those who must subject themselves to degrading, soul-stunting, life-negating regimens of drudgery, even pressing their children into service, that privation might be kept at bay. And, to top off this attractive world-image, there is a delectable little cherry: the plutocrats are genuine Americans, for they are a Master Capitalists, and capitalism is the essence of America; and the helots are Americans, for they have embraced the system (the swindle of consent) by labouring so assiduously within it, without raising a voice of complaint, accepting it as a fact of nature (for this is supposed to be the state of nature, secured by political consent) to which all must submit in faith.

Those who dissent from this vision of the world are not Americans, not in any meaningful sense, for they have the temerity to believe that tangible, substantive realities - of culture, justice, a way of life, including a standard of living - ought to have primacy over purely economic abstractions, and will not manifest due subordination by groveling beneath the table of the plutocracy, hoping for a few meagre scraps, and counting it munificence. They will not bless immiseration and count it bounty. And this new American way of life, this 'freedom', is not free, obviously, but bought with the toils of those born to serve. It is as though a segment of American society, having once ridiculed all the old Marxist rhetoric as just so much exaggeration and calumny, decided to enact it, un-self-consciously, and proclaim it as virtue, right down to the last detail of the little people expressing their gratitude for their subjection.

O that they were wise, that they understood this, that they would consider their latter end! And perhaps more proximate ends as well.

Comments (19)

The conversation Zmirak cites began with a topic with which Zmirak is obviously uncomfortable: the resentful attitudes, sense of entitlement, and absence of a work ethic in inner city blacks. Zmirak o'erleaps _that_ topic pretty quickly, though, in order to move on to a stirring evocation of people who share with you "the hymns you know by heart, the folktales you treasure, the God you worship." If he believes that this feel-good cultural unity with himself is characteristic of the people who were the original topic of the conversation that got him so worked up, I have some real estate in Chicago and Detroit I'd like to sell him.

Similarly, if you are under the impression that you are properly characterizing inner-city blacks in the following words, you have some confusions: "Those who dissent from this vision of the world are not Americans, not in any meaningful sense, for they have the temerity to believe that tangible, substantive realities - of culture, justice, a way of life, including a standard of living - ought to have primacy over purely economic abstractions, and will not manifest due subordination by groveling beneath the table of the plutocracy, hoping for a few meagre scraps, and counting it munificence." And it was, after all, inner-city blacks of whom the man in the quotation said that they are not Americans. I assume that context was not being _entirely_ left out of account.

So are the guys living off their girlfriends' welfare checks and their own drug sales nobly resisting the nasty capitalists' attempts to turn them into helots? Are they standing up for "tangible, substantive realities" over "purely economic abstractions." And which tangible realities were those, again? Frankly, I think they would be in a better situation, and not only ecnomically, if they would engage in a little helotry!

Not that I agree with the people Zmirak was talking to, either. They may have exaggerated the presence of a work ethic and the unwillingness to be parasitic on the welfare system in the Mexican illegals they were praising. And anyway, we're not going to help our inner-city problem by giving amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants. Nor are we going to help our inner-city problem by saying that the people in the inner cities "aren't Americans." You can't just make problems disappear by redefining words like that.

But we do no one any good by sneering at hard work and good manners--which Zmirak's interlocutors attributed to Mexican workers--as mere false consciousness, as the cooperation of stupid proles in their own immiseration.

Look, I've grown up around business, and I've heard everything Zmirak reports of his interlocutors - and much worse - from businessmen and their apologists. From the old tropes about the insubordination of blacks and the pliancy of Hispanics, their willingness to toil long hours for a pittance, to the ingratitude of blacks who would not take a wage that only enabled a Hispanic to live in a flophouse with 15 other men - I've heard it all.

The lot of it sickens me. For one thing, those inner-city blacks, sunken in a culture of shiftlessness and welfarism, are ours; they are our countrymen, in a way that migrant workers and illegal immigrants cannot be. Whether we extend our approbation to all of the products of black culture is beside the point: their culture is intertwined with ours, their destiny with ours. Hence, for another thing, we have obligations towards them that we do not, and cannot, have towards those Hispanic immigrants. We owe them, at a minimum, not to compel them to compete for substandard wages with those who are willing to live in a manner that Americans will not accept - and should not, because it is not in our culture to accept it. We owe them, that is, employment opportunities commensurate with our own standard of living, and not that of some remote Mexican province. The degradations of inner-city culture, that is, do nothing to mitigate the injustice of the plutocracy.

While many inner-city blacks fail to give two thoughts to the question of gainful employment, enough of them do resent the competition that the establishment forces upon them. Obviously, one does not resist the plutocracy by dealing drugs or sponging off of a girlfriend's welfare check; one only harms oneself and one's community. The dissent is intellectual and moral, even political; but it has nothing to do with simply refusing work. But do we seriously believe that competing with illegal labour for meagre wages is a legitimate inducement to seek employment? The fact that many blacks fail to fulfill a moral duty to seek gainful employment is actually irrelevant to the fact of the injustice of the conduct of the plutocrats. Either could obtain in the complete absence of the other. Of course the degraded culture of the urban proletariat must be reformed, and a critical element of such reform must be a greater willingness to, you know, work; but the moral obligations here are not unidirectional, only those of prospective workers towards families, themselves, their communities.

As for the sneering at hard work and good manners of many Hispanics, that is hardly what I'm doing. It is simply that such things are irrelevant to the things with which I was concerned in this post: the injustice of the plutocracy and the idiocy of our immigration policies, which are subservient to the plutocracy. They can work as hard as they wish, and they are still violating our laws, and being treated shabbily by their employers. Theirs is not a false consciousness so much as naivete ripe for exploitation. If they truly subscribed to the nostrums of the libertarian economic right, that would be false consciousness, because the entire logic of their doctrines demands driving down "costs", including that of labour, as a means of augmenting profits; they would be blessing their own immiseration. In reality, they're mainly - we're speaking of the ones who work, not the MS-13 gangbangers and the welfare sponges - looking for a life better than the one they had in Mexico; when they acquire a bit of knowledge, and the political climate is propitious, as it was last year, they tend to be more assertive.

The lot of it sickens me. For one thing, those inner-city blacks, sunken in a culture of shiftlessness and welfarism, are ours; they are our countrymen, in a way that migrant workers and illegal immigrants cannot be.
While I agree with this, even if I did not, simple prudence would incline me to the view that, since the "resentful parasites" don't simply vanish one by one every time an illegal immigrant crosses the border, a policy that will further immiserate and inflame them is not to our society's overall benefit. And of course, it bears repeating that the children of todays pleasantly compliant stoop laborers are the "resentful parasites" of tomorrow.

Being able to say "I told you so" seems the only public vindication available to those of our persuasion. Thus, I eagerly await the sons of today's meatpackers, restauranteurs, and lawn-care company owners referring (under their breath) to the less obsequious native-born sons of today's Hispanic immigrants as resentful parasites while they declare Nigeria or rural India the next great source of "real" Americans, without whom all their enterprises will fail for lack of willing hands, and America grind to a halt. Cheap labor isn't cheap, a lesson we ought to have learned no later than 1865.

"Since the "resentful parasites" don't simply vanish one by one every time an illegal immigrant crosses the border..."

Well, yes, that was my point. It's not clear how importing laborers who do not have these qualities (resentfulness, etc.) will help us deal with the people already here and already citizens who do have these qualities.

And maybe these guys don't think it will help. Maybe that's not their point, and they are just all about importing the hard-working labor from wherever they can find it.

To be honest, I'm not entirely sympathetic to everything that has been said here about the evils of trying to find cheap labor. (I guess that won't come as much of a surprise.) On the other hand, I am open to consequential arguments to the effect that we will simply make this or that situation worse by continuing to pursue labor of such-and-such a level of cheapness.

I cannot help feeling that part of the problem is the over-generosity of our welfare programs and various public handouts. Is that not part of _why_ we predict later problems with the next generation after today's immigrants?

Thomas Sowell has argued that repealing the Davis-Bacon Act would be of great help to blacks who are looking for work. What do you guys think?

Well, I'm feeling too lazy to check Google to see if the rest of the world agrees with...gee, now I'm wondering if it's Williams rather than Sowell? Anyway, according to the author I have in mind (black semi-libertarian economist), the Davis-Bacon Act requires that all government contracts (I think just federal) must pay union scale. This isn't just minimum wage, but whatever union scale is for that kind of job in that region of the country. He argues that this tends to bias the hiring in such projects against unskilled laborers in construction jobs, etc. who often tend to be black. The idea isn't that it's a "racist" law but merely that this is an unintended effect.

I am not familiar with all the arguments for the repeal, but given the strong preference to hire Hispanics over native-born blacks, wouldn't repealing Davis-Bacon simply lead to contractors hiring even more Hispanics, even illegal ones?

Presumably, the wage-scale to which inner-city blacks would be entitled, under a strict market logic, would be comparable to that applied to Hispanics of similar skill levels by the contractors who hire them. Whether around minimum wage, somewhat above it, or somewhat below it, these wages are insufficient to avoid the "privatization of profits, socialization of costs" dilemma that necessitates all manner of public support for low-income workers, from food supports, subsidized emergency-room health care, and free public education, to actual housing subsidies. Society will bear these costs either up-front, in the form of higher wages and prices, or on the back-end, in the form of a higher tax burden (or public indebtedness). The reason to prefer the former method of cost-sharing is that it reduces stratification, bureaucratization, and all of their attendant social externalities and evils. So, it is unclear that allowing the winds of pure market forces to blow through the inner city resolves as many problems as proponents believe.

Note that I discount the possibility of the libertarian solution, on the grounds that it would entail a high degree of stratification, with low-income workers unable to secure even basic necessities, or to sustain families. That impoverished illegals often live in squalid flophouses suffices to demonstrate this effect of a pure market determination of wages. This set of circumstances would either occasion unrest or revolutionary ferment, or result forthwith in the creation of a welfare state: we have already been there and done that.

As Cyrus notes, however, all of this may well be irrelevant, in that there exists a non-skills related bias towards the hiring of Hispanics, which is self-reinforcing.

Sowell (I'm sure it's Sowell) isn't taking on the illegal immigration issue in the discussions I have in mind. And his argument against Davis-Bacon is separate, and I suppose separable, from his arguments (which he does make) against minimum wage. Presumably if Davis-Bacon were repealed, minimum wage laws would remain in place. And immigration laws could also be enforced. If so, there are probably enough jobs in such contracts that employers would hire black as well as (legal) hispanic workers.

So, Maximos, I gather you're saying that you don't think even minimum wage is high enough? So would this mean that you think all employers (not even just those doing government contracts) should be forced to pay something as high as union scale to avoid stratification and other social costs? Or perhaps we should on your view radically raise minimum wage?

I really doubt that such a move would help the workers with which you are concerned, but this is an old disagreement between us.

" I gather you're saying that you don't think even minimum wage is high enough? So would this mean that you think all employers (not even just those doing government contracts) should be forced to pay something as high as union scale to avoid stratification and other social costs? Or perhaps we should on your view radically raise minimum wage?"

Black under-class obviously present a problem that we could not solve over last 50 years. And not for the lack of trying.

Lets postulate that it is a difficult problem.
Obviously presence of mass legal and illegal immigration does nothing in solving the problem and creates all kinds of obstacles for low skill Americans.

Should not, we, as a first step, trying to do no harm?

Should not goverment stop actively damaging work prospects of low skilled Americans?

Under current conditions I'm all for setting Min wage as high as reasonably possible. Only because gov tends to enforce Min wage laws much more actively than immigration laws. With high Min wage illegals employers probably will have to pay most of them below Min wage, thus exposing themselves to enforcement actions. Employment will shrink with, hopefully, illegals hit more than legal workers.

AFAIK, the federal government does not prosecute employers for paying their illegals less than minimum wage. Neither minimum wage laws nor immigration laws are enforced against them for that group of people. This seems logical: Once you note that the employer is hiring Juan for less than X dollars, you pretty much have to note as well that he shouldn't be employing Juan at all. If someone knows for a fact that the feds are punishing employers for not paying their illegals minimum wage (and they pay them below it now) while not punishing them for hiring the illegals per se, I'd like to see the evidence. My very strong impression is that the minimum wage laws now in place are part of the motivation for the employers for hiring illegals. Hence raising minimum wage would only increase the incentive for hiring illegals.

One irony here is that people arguing for amnesty sometimes don't seem to realize that if we legalize all these illegals, the employers are then going to have to pay them minimum wage! From the employers' standpoint, then, amnesty should really be a bad thing, as bringing these people "out of the shadows" means the employers can't evade minimum wage laws for them anymore. For the soft-hearted, this fact should give them pause over the fact that granting amnesty will almost certainly put a lot of the people for whom they are so concerned out of work in any event and hence throw them onto the welfare roles, as their legal status means they have to be hired at minimum wage, resulting in lay-offs.

"the federal government does not prosecute employers for paying their illegals less than minimum wage. Neither minimum wage laws nor immigration laws are enforced against them for that group of people. This seems logical: Once you note that the employer is hiring Juan for less than X dollars, you pretty much have to note as well that he shouldn't be employing Juan at all."

A bunch of assertions with no supporting evidence and clearly with little personal experience.

No employer in his right mind will On-the-Books employee less than minimum wage. Doing so just invites trouble.
Off-the-Books employee could be paid anything, of course.

Larger employers tend to keep illegals on the Books and pay them above minimum wage.

And no, your logic is not the goverment logic. State departments that enforce min wage laws in most cases are not interested in immigration status of an illegal. I would guess that in most large states they are prohibited from cooperating with INS.

MLK do you know of actual incidents of employers' being prosecuted or even given explicit warnings by federal bureaucrats/enforcers _not_ for employing illegals but for paying them minimum wage, so that they could have avoided the prosecution or met the warning by paying the illegals minimum wage while continuing to employ them?

I note, too, MLK, that even if I grant your claims about the present practices of "larger employers," your hypotheses about what even these employers would do if minimum wage were raised sky-high remain purely speculative. It seems to me at least as likely that they would decide employing illegals on the books was the problem, fire them, and either rehire the same people off the books or hire a new set of illegals off the books. This would seem to make at least as much sense as either slowing production radically or paying everyone the new, much higher, wage. Or a combination of cutting back somewhat on total employees and hiring off the books might be used. It certainly seems _extremely_ implausible that the net effect, even with these "larger employers" would be positively to decrease the employment of illegals in absolute terms, thus discouraging illegal immigration. Meanwhile, you appear to be agreeing that those who aren't "larger employers" are hiring illegals off the books, when they can be paid anything. This certainly squares with my own impression and even tends to bolster Maximos's complaints about immiseration, helotry, and flophouses with 15 other men. And for anyone who already makes a practice of hiring illegals off the books (you _must_ admit that there are many such) a raise in minimum wage only incentivizes firing on-the-books employees and extending the list of those already off the books.

"MLK do you know of actual incidents of employers' being prosecuted or even given explicit warnings by federal bureaucrats/enforcers _not_ for employing illegals but for paying them minimum wage"

It is MIK not mlk.

No, I don't know about a single case for prosecuting employer for having illegal ON-THE-Books employee and paying him sub-minimum wage.

On another hand I don't know about a single case for prosecuting employer for having legal ON-THE-Books employee and paying him sub-minimum wage.

I don know about a few cases in gray area, employee was on-the-books but worked more hours than recorded, had to pay back some of his earnings and other tricks of that nature.

And yes, I know about couple cases in the last category where employer was punished for tricketry while his quite obvious hiring of illegals went unmentioned.

I could not understand your second posting.
Small employers, and quite a few medium ones, routinely hire illegals for cash, off-the-books.
Why would mobs of illegals hang around Home Depot if that was not a case?

Increase in min wage will make on-the-books employment of some low skill illegals unprofitable. Fewer job opportunities for illegals.
That is all. By itself it will not create job opportunities for low skill Americans.

But more aggressive enforcement min wage law, even among off-the-book employees, will rather radically reduce job opportunities for illegals.

[quote]One irony here is that people arguing for amnesty sometimes don't seem to realize that if we legalize all these illegals, the employers are then going to have to pay them minimum wage![/quote]The going rate for illegals in the Washington DC area is well above minimum wage, at least in the construction and landscaping trades, and probably in other lines of work. It is still not enough to live particularly well in this area's grotesquely overpriced housing market, but it far exceeds the statutory minimum. It may be very different in Arkansas or Tennessee, where the illegal population is exploding. I think illegals, or immigrants in general, are simply preferred at any wage level to Americans. They're perceived to be more diligent, and the employer tends to have a great deal more power in the relationship than he does with a citizen employee.

"Small employers, and quite a few medium ones, routinely hire illegals for cash, off-the-books.
Why would mobs of illegals hang around Home Depot if that was not a case?"

Mik, my point there was that with these guys, raising the minimum wage would make a greater incentive to do even more of this, because as you said then you can pay them anything. I think by saying that they could be paid anything if off-the-books, you were also pretty much agreeing that the idea of enforcing off-the-books pay below minimum wage would be very hard. Evidence-gathering would be quite difficult if the entire thing is done in cash and off the records.

Cyrus, that's an interesting and useful piece of data. If minimum wage were much higher, I wonder if that would continue to be the case, though. I really find it very difficult to believe that we're going to drive people back to Mexico by _raising_ minimum wage radically, as Mik proposes.

"I think illegals, or immigrants in general, are simply preferred at any wage level to Americans. They're perceived to be more diligent, and the employer tends to have a great deal more power in the relationship than he does with a citizen employee."

Sad, but very true.

I have observed that phenomenon at $100K/year and $140K/year wages.

Most legal immigrants in hiring position will give an immigrant, especially an immigrant from his tribe, all the breaks in the world.

Quite a few Americans will do quite a bit to avoid hiring an American.

"you were also pretty much agreeing that the idea of enforcing off-the-books pay below minimum wage would be very hard."

Not really. Have a workplace raid, interview employees, check employer's books. In 99% cases, off-the-book employee will not be properly recorded in the books.

As you can imagine, gov does not do that. Labor dep reps will check employer's books only, no raids.

Also, I don't believe that increasing min wage will solve illegal immigration problem. It will help some.

Solution is to send 3-4 top level execs to jail for 5-10 years for repeated violations. Another 5-10 well advertised prosecutions (one per major metropolitan area) of small fry, contractors and/or fast food operators.
In 6 months new jobs will evaporate, in 12 months a large scale of self-deportation will be in full progress.

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